By Alyson Pitarre
PHOTOS @SEPIA PRODUCTIONS INC.

An 8-acre Andalusian hacienda creates magic high above Los Angeles in the guard-gated city of Rolling Hills, California.

“I felt like an eagle perched at the top of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, 1,100 feet above sea level, surveying my domain,” describes John Z. Blazevich, as he recalls the first time he stood on the stunning 8-acre parcel in the guard-gated city of Rolling Hills, where the splendid Hacienda de la Paz estate now rests. “I searched extensively in Los Angeles for a location with abundant acreage that was private, safe and off the radar. I found it in Rolling Hills.”

Indeed, he did. The impressive work of art and engineering took Blazevich, a food entrepreneur, nearly 17 years to bring to fruition. It was worth the wait. The end result is a millennium of architecture under one roof.

“I wanted to build a home that would stand the test of time,” he remembers fondly. “Therefore, it had to be historical. It had to be original. It had to be meaningful. And it had to be reflective of California.”

Blazevich felt, however, that California’s immediate history was too rustic — so he turned to the first-generation Spanish hacienda style, which he perceived as a sophisticated representation of Spain’s architectural history that later influenced California’s residential style. He cultivated a design vision by tracing Spain’s historical roots back to the Spanish explorers who discovered the Golden State, and then he “brought the history and architecture forward to the look of the 19th-century Andalusia region of Spain,” he reveals.